updated 11:20 am EDT, Tue November 1, 2011

ATT belatedly gets Bold 9900, Curve 9360 Nov 6

AT&T caught up to other US carriers on Tuesday with belated additions to its BlackBerry line. The carrier plans to pick up both the Bold 9900 as its headlining BlackBerry and plans to sell it for $200 on November 6. Another long-promised phone, the Torch 9860, is due the same day for $100.

The entry Curve 9360 will follow on November 20 for $30 on a contract, although corporate and government users will get access to the Curve November 14 and can get one without a camera.

All three phones largely fit the reference design apart from AT&T's choice of wallpaper. The Curve 9360 has a 2.44-inch, 480x360 screen, an 800MHz processor, and a five-megapixel camera with VGA video recording. Upgrading to the Bold gets a 2.8-inch, 640x480 touchscreen, a 1.2GHz Snapdragon chip, and 720p video, along with the larger keyboard.

AT&T was one of the first to get a BlackBerry 7 device in the US but started off with the Torch 9810, a mild update to the existing design. Its versions of the new Bold, Curve, and Torch arrive after most other larger US carriers have already released theirs, in some cases almost three months later. AT&T hasn't explained the reasons for the later arrivals.

The timing of the launch isn't likely to help RIM. It comes just as AT&T is launching the HTC Vivid and Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket, its first LTE phones and its new Android flagships. AT&T's timing may be focused on getting devices out for the holidays but is likely to obscure the less advanced BlackBerry models.